2024 Survey Results

Hi, here's some stats that came out of the survey, from over 1000 responses:

Have you read the entire series (Swords: The Webcomic)?
Yes (67.4%)
No (20.1%)
Not sure (12.5%)

Which aspects of Swords do you care about the most?
Funny one-offs andpuns (eg. Edgesmith) - Mostly "Like"
Lore and world-building (eg. Kargob) - Mostly "Love"
Cute and wholesome (eg. Quest Sprout) - Mostly "Love"
Cool characters andmoments (eg. TheNeverwarden) - Mostly "Love"
Sexy characters (eg.Durengal) - Mostly "Like"

Lore and world-building was the most "Loved" and Sexy characters had the most "Disliked"

Have you ever purchased Swordscomic merch or directly supported the series financially?
Yes (29%)
No (71%)

Are you aware of Swords: Cut the Deck, the card game coming soon?
Yes, I have preordered (14%)
Yes, I have not preordered (57.9%)
No (28.1%)

Almost a third of people didn't know about it, which lets me know I'm not being too overbearing with my advertising. That's a good thing!

Which Swordscomic character would it be most exciting to see as a Makeship plushie?
Quest Sprout (15%)
Lake Monster (6.4%)
Rapier Tapir (5.7%)
Bread Knight (4.5%)
panDEMONium (4.1%)
Durengal (3.9%)
Kargob (3.7%)
Demon Swords (3.3%)
Chad the Bastard Sword (3.1%)
Momma Sprout (2.7%)
A Sword (2.5%)
Demon King (2.4%)
Jest Sprout (1.9%)
Other (40.8%)

About half of respondents answered this question, and there is also some recency bias because Kargob, Quest Sprout and Durengal were all mentioned in another part of the survey. Some people also wrote long lists and some people listed the Demon Swords by name which are therefore counted in "other", so some answers may not be properly represented.

The Lake Monster being a popular pick surprised me quite a bit!

"Pandemonium plush series. Make it be the 8 demon swords that if all are bought, it can connect together via a couple magnets!"
I'm not really confident people will wanna buy $250 worth of plushies to make one big plushie, but it's a fun thought experiment.

Are you aware of Swords Sticker Club, available on Patreon and Ko-Fi?
Yes, I am a member (5.2%)
Yes, I am not a member (44%)
No (50.8%)

I'll do more to hype this up for the Christmas Sticker Club

What content, service or product would make you excited to join the Swords Patreon page?
Most people took the opportunity to talk about their own lack of finances, but otherwise words like "Lore", "Exclusive Comics" and "DnD" came up the most

Do you have a pain-point with regards to the series?
Most people mentioned the lack of a rigid upload schedule, unexpected hiatuses, long gaps between plot progression and gripes about the lack of a chronological story. There was some confusion that people thought the chronological ordered stuff was locked behind a paywall (it isn't). There were also some complaints about the website having a prompt to accept cookies (a legal requirement) and having popup ads sometimes.

A few people complained about Quest Sprouts prominence, but in some cases they also acknowledged that he doesn't feature nearly as often anymore, which I can't do much to fix! Other people rightly complained he doesn't show up enough.

I couldn't help but notice that the people who were generally the most adversarial in their feedback and threatened to stop reading entirely were the people asking for more NSFW content in every other field...

This is an optional space to leave any additional comments you might have. Thank you for taking the time to answer the rest of the survey!
I'll take this opportunity to publicly answer a few comments:

"foremost I feel like the funny possesed tree character just got left in the dust."
"i want to see more Motar"
- Motar was a Patreon Tournament character and he got left in the Patreon Tournament

"How about a [insert weapon here] spinoff?"
"I feel like some jokes using bows would not go amiss?"
"More alt universes stuff please"
- I currently have three great artists, InkyRickshaw, AdmiralWonderboat and RdsToNowhere who are keen to help me extend the Swords universe with spinoff comics, when I figure out how to reliably pay them to do it. It's something I'll keep striving towards as we build up Patreon.

"Swordcomic is a good 8.7/10 web comic"
- Hello comfort zone!


There's lots more comments, including some really nice ones! Thank you for responding to the survey! Overall, I think it was much more positive than last year - but last time filling in some of those harder questions was mandatory too. Silence is golden?

Thanks!